Illegal Digital Music Swapping

Illegal Digital Music Swapping

David Knip Professor Chao Eng 1a November 13, 2010 Illegal digital
music
swapping With the immense growth of the internet over the last decade,
the
music industry has suffered a great loss of potential profit due to
illegal
digital music swapping. Over the last couple of years it is estimated
that
95% of music downloaded was obtained illegally. This percentage
translated
into numbers is staggering. One would think that the music industry
would
be failing due to profit losses, but what is interesting is that
recording
companies and artists still seem to be making huge profits. So what
then
exactly are the negative effects of illegal digital music swapping? As
far
as profits are concerned I’m not so sure there are any. The biggest
effect
of illegal digital music swapping is that it has forever changed the
way
the recording industry does business. So why has illegal digital music
swapping become so popular? I believe one cause is because consumers
were
fed up with the high prices of CD’s. Before the internet, consumers had
no
choice but to purchase CD’s for the music they wanted. The recording
industry took advantage of this and charged outrageous prices. This
certainly led consumers to seeking alternative methods of obtaining
music.
Because the recording industry was charging way more then what the
consumer
believed an album was worth, it brought this problem upon itself in
trying
to amass huge profits. Another cause of the popularity of illegally
swapping digital music is the increase in technology. In times past the
music industry’s profits came from the sales of physical media such as
records, tapes, and CD’s. While the music industry faced some threat
from
CD’s and tapes being illegally copied, the threat was not substantial
and
hailed nothing in comparison to that of illegal digital music swapping.
As
CD burners became standard in new PCs people could locally borrow a
copy of
the CD and burn a copy. This proved to...

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